As we can see by the enormous number of
journalists and
bloggers who couldn`t wait to put the boot in when the great man
was down, and by the negligible number who came forward to defend
the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, the chattering classes of
the 21st Century are composed, by and large, of
bullies
and/or
cowards.

Why did so many so enthusiastically sign up as auxiliaries of the
Thought Police?

Another example: As of October 27, a search
revealed that not one of the myriad columnists and bloggers at
TownHall.com had even mentioned the Watson scandal.

As I
noted at the time of the Trent Lott Lynching, a “Righteous
Right“ has emerged, especially in Washington, which has in
effect internalized the left`s hysterical
race denial. The betrayal of Watson is further evidence of the
profound cost of this development to American public discourse.

When you beg forgiveness, the
hate-filled jackals just smell your fear and weakness. It
excites them, so they pile on. Further, the watching crowd can`t
tell who`s right, so they respect whoever seems the master of the
situation at the moment.

In his October 19 response in the U.K. Independent, "To
question genetic intelligence is not racism," Watson seemingly
tried to be subtle, arguing that there was a difference between
inferiority and diversity, then pointing out the Darwinian
implausibility that everyone could have evolved to be identical.

Well, swell. But the politically correct don`t engage in rational
argument. They
just hound and bludgeon. So you have to stand your ground.

There is so much
agitprop in the media about IQ and race that only aggressive,
confident responses can cut through the lies. For example, Watson
could have hit back like this:

Q. Is there really such a thing as "intelligence" and can IQ
tests measure it?

A. Don`t be ignorant. The
U.S. military has spent a fortune from WWII onward giving an IQ
test to
everyone who tries to enlist. The Armed Services have turned
away millions of
would-be volunteers and draftees because their
IQs were too low. How come? Because the
Pentagon has done numerous studies showing that on average
higher IQ people outperform lower IQ people.

Thus the PC Inquisition has several times tried to destroy the
careers of
Pat Buchanan and
Ann Coulter. But Pat and Ann simply won`t let them.

Not surprisingly, Steven Rose has been accused of practicing what
he preaches: having the government silence scientists whose ideas he
dislikes.

According to social scientist
Volkmar Weiss,
a dissident under the East German Communist dictatorship, Rose
ratted him out to the
East Berlin regime, setting in motion the crushing in East
Germany of IQ research and human behavioral genetics.

Weiss explains this in a 1983
essay
entitled The Suppression of Human Behavioral Genetics by the Radical
Left—unpublished, for obvious reasons, until 1991. He wrote:

"In 1980, the manuscript of the monograph Psychogenetik (Weiss
1982a) was complete. Now some fierce dogmatists were discovering
that a cuckoo`s egg had been laid in the nest of socialism. One
example: S. Rose asked his East German colleague, the professor of
neurochemistry D. Biesold at the Karl-Marx-University of Leipzig
(personal communication by Biesold), whether there was no means of
stopping further publications by Weiss, because such publications
printed in a socialist country were particularly disadvantageous to
the propaganda of the Radical Left in the Western world. …”

Rose`s wish appears to have been the East German Communists`
command:

"[A]t the end of the year 1982 [Walter] Friedrich [director of
the Central Institute of Youth Research in Leipzig] sought and
obtained the backing of high-ranking officials of the Communist
Party and all further research in psychogenetics in East Germany
came to an end."

Weiss goes
on to describe the aftermath he endured, which would be familiar
to anyone who saw the tremendous 2006 film about life in East
Germany under the thumb of the secret police,
The
Lives of Others:

“… the cited author was under the threat of arrest and had
already lost all possibility of doing further empirical work of
defending his field of research. After 1984, Weiss was forced to
work in a quite different field … What follows is the usual story of
life and resistance under totalitarian conditions. In order to be
published abroad, any new theoretical contributions had to be
smuggled out of the GDR."

I asked Weiss about the incident. He replied:

"What I have written and published is completely true.

"However, in 1993 a journalist of a leading English daily (which
I do not remember) visited me in Leipzig and tried to confirm my
publication by independent sources. At this time

[Dietmar]
Biesold had
already died, his widow did not know anything. Biesold, who had
done research together with Rose, had told me about Rose under
four eyes [in secret], and there was no witness. Evaluating
this, the English daily, afraid to be sued for libeling by Rose, did
not publish anything.

"After my publication, Rose had published in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung a note in which he declared that he never was
involved in activities against East German scientists. My name and
my publication was not explicitly mentioned, and I had never
personal contact with Rose. He tried never to be active in any
direct way against me and never mentioned or cited me.”

New York University has rescinded a lecture invitation to James
Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, because of
his apparently offensive views.

The lecture, initially scheduled for September 12, was canceled
in response to objections that Watson, who essentially led the
way forward in microbiology and earned a Nobel Prize for his
efforts, suggested in an interview with The Times of London in
2007 that
blacks on average have lower IQs than other population
groups.

But a group of students protested the choice of Watson for the
3rd annual Rodolfo Llinás Lecture Series at the NYU Langone
Medical Center. The students, who argued Watson had been
offensive to blacks, women and the obese, won out.

“We are writing to inform you that the lecture by Professor
James Watson, scheduled for September 12, 2016 has been
cancelled,”
the NYU letter read. “We received the attached letter that
had been written by medical and graduate students at NYU School
of Medicine to express their feelings regarding the invitation
of Dr. Watson for this distinguished lecture. In the letter, the
students raised the point that Dr. Watson had made public claims
to diminish respect for black, female and obese individuals. We
agree with the students that this runs counter to our mission of
diversity and inclusion at NYU Langone Medical Center and have
thus elected to cancel the lecture.”

The letter stated that NYU has a commitment both to equality, as
well as freedom of speech.

But that balance did not entail tolerating Watson’s speech as
part of the lecture series.

{snip}

Watson ran afoul of the scientific community in his interview
with The Times of London, even though just prior to his comments
to the media, he expressed roughly the same sentiment in his
book, “Avoid Boring People,” which he was promoting. The book,
interestingly enough, received near-rave reviews.

In the book, Watson stated, “there is no firm reason to
anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples
geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have
evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of
reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough
to make it so.”

In the interview, he said “there are many people of color who
are very talented,” but added he is “inherently gloomy about the
prospect of Africa.”